Featured on 60 Minutes, The LA Times, The NY Times, NBC 4 NY, etc. Dr. Ralph Moss!
Hey, Friend! 😊
Happy weekend! 🐶 If you remember a little while back I interviewed Dr. Ralph Moss, who is both a cancer survivor and cancer researcher. I did not mention that he has been interviewed by 60 Minutes, NBC 4 NY, CBS in San Francisco, the President of Penn State and his work has been covered in the NY Times, the LA Times and Science Magazine! He has also published in several medical journals and other publications, including: The Lancet, a world-renowned peer-reviewed medical journal; The Journal of the National Cancer Institute; The Journal of Clinical Oncology; The Journal of the American Medical Association; New Scientist; Immunobiology; Pharmacological Research; Anticancer Research; Genetic Engineering News; Research in Complementary Medicine; The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine; Journal of Cancer Research and Therapeutics and Integrative Cancer Therapies, of which he is Corresponding Editor. His invited op-ed “Patents Over Patients” appeared in the New York Times as well.
He is also the author of the following documentaries: The award-winning PBS documentary The Cancer War; A Special Gift: Albert Szent-Gyorgyi; Man’s Best Friends (Frontline); and Second Opinion (starring). Dr. Moss was also a founding advisor to: The National Institutes of Health’s Office of Alternative Medicine (now the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, NCCIH) and The NIH Cancer Advisory Panel on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAP-CAM). He's been a voice for the incredibly unjust and ruthless bias of the medical establishment and media that ruins reputations of legitimate treatment options and cancer concepts, though he graciously lectured for Grand Rounds at the institution he left in the 1970s after blowing the whistle on the suppression of their lab's Laetrile research results.
With such an incredible resume, Dr. Moss can certainly be called a cancer expert! His perspective is objective and research-based rather than based on emotions, which can hinder proper thinking, especially when a person experiences harsh or unjust treatment from doctors or staff like Moss did when he went through prostate cancer treatment and I did when I had melanoma. One of my favorite lines from our interview was this: "It's not necessary to politicize this and form sides to fight against each other." We have to keep the peace in the cancer community! There's no benefit to opposing another "side" - rather, we really need to work together to solve the cancer puzzle. We need everyone involved! So what does someone with such experience and expertise recommend for cancer treatment? The main topic we discussed was whether to use conventional or alternative treatments or both, and when. Dr. Moss concluded that for most people, in the middle stages of cancer, both conventional and alternative treatments at the same time typically yield the best results. If a person has very early or late stage cancer, in which the doctors say their treatments can't help, and if the person has the resources available, "then it makes sense [to use alternative treatments,]" Dr. Moss said.
And which alternative treatments did Dr. Moss recommend? The most well-researched, best data-backed alternative treatment was Coley's toxins. Bingo! This is one of the treatments I received in Mexico, which I have seen many times as a factor in remission cases in the Spontaneous Remission Project and sometimes in people I've met. Where can you get alternative treatments such as Coley's toxins? Dr. Moss recommended getting treatment at an Austrian clinic where a colleague of his, Dr. Kleef, works (they have worked with mutual patients and published 2 peer-reviewed articles together), however I am also familiar with St. Andrew's Clinic and CHIPSA, which offer Coley's in Tijuana, Mexico. I usually recommend St. Andrew's over CHIPSA because of the price and the opportunity to work one-on-one with Gar Hildenbrand, the best Coley's toxins expert, in my opinion! 😊
Dr. Moss offers one-on-one consulting and you can get 10% off by using the code bobrien10. I am also here to help with gathering information and providing resources and encouragement! However, I always say that after a cancer diagnosis, in addition to seeking guidance from multiple professionals (one person doesn't know everything and he/she only has one perspective), one should also pray, do their own research and get as many facts as possible and form a well-rounded perspective before making an informed decision that is based on faith and peace rather than fear and anxiety.
If you'd like to do more of your own research, another great resource from Dr. Moss' work is his free Ultimate Guide to DIY Research! The main lesson I learned from this was that UpToDate.com was the best, most accurate and updated resource available online for information on all types of cancer, including causes and treatments for each type. I bought a subscription and found it helpful and interesting! If you're really into researching the best clinical data available I encourage you to consider subscribing to it. The DIY guide also mentions the Devita cancer textbook which is HUGE but also very educational.
Please go to this link to get to our interview and access the show notes!
Have a great weekend, Friend! 😊🌻 Blessing Bailey
Goodness of God by Worship Initiative (one of my favorite calming songs)
DR. MOSS' BIO
"The medical writer Ralph W. Moss, PhD, has written or edited twelve books and four film documentaries on questions relating to cancer research and treatment.
Dr. Moss is a graduate of New York University (BA, cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, 1965) and Stanford University (MA, 1973, PhD, 1974, Classics). He is the former science writer and assistant director of public affairs at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York (1974-1977). Since leaving Sloan-Kettering in 1977, Moss has independently evaluated the claims of conventional and non-conventional cancer treatments all over the world.
He currently writes Moss Reports, detailed reports on the most common cancer diagnoses and provides informational and personalized consultations for cancer patients and their families. In 2019, he wrote The Ultimate Guide to Cancer: DIY Research, to help lay people research their own cancers. This 50-page report is available free of charge at the mossreports.com website."
LOOSE TRANSCRIPTS/SHOW NOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW
Dr. Moss uncovered the laetrile scandal at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
3:20 Q) What value do you think conventional treatment has and what percentage do you think it plays in people healing from cancer.
A) I think you have to blend the two, as hard as it is. I think we can't say either CAM or conventional has the answer and you can abandon one and just rely on one. There is a lot of emotion attached to this. A lot of times the oncologist is their own worst enemy. A patient he consulted with was an intelligent, inquiring person and the oncologist told her she needed chemo and hormonal therapy but he didn't answer her questions. Because of that it made her suspicious, her intelligence was insulted.
There are cases of people who had really good responses to treatment and often times complementary medicine is involved in that.
His general impression is that people who get better in advanced cases have almost always done some combination of things. He doesn't think we have to make a choice between the two. You look at the options and you see is this something I could go through and come out in good shape.
He had Gleason 8 prostate cancer. Initially he was horribly mistreated and he went through agonizing abuse at an Ivy League associated medical center. They completely misdiagnosed his situation and they said nothing could be done but radiation and hormonal therapy. He went to the one urology department that had a naturopathic doctor at NYU Langone. He was able to get cryoablation. He had no radiation and no surgery. It was done using something that looked like an acupuncture needle and it was able to freeze the tumor and destroy it in a way that stimulates the immune system. This was under the guidance of the naturopathic doctor.
Before he had cancer he was saying the same thing. The best thing is to integrate the two sides, combining them. But it's best to make one treatment out of it so you don't have to go behind your oncologist's back.
Just a few weeks ago he passed his five year remission anniversary and there have been minimal side effects.
It's not necessary to politicize this and form sides to fight against each other.
Bailey: I met a woman two years ago who had 10 years of remission from stage 4 cervical cancer. She was given 3 days to a week left to live and her friends wanted her to do only natural therapies. She couldn't find any stories of people only doing natural therapies for what she had so she prayed and did the high dose chemo and she survived, I can confirm at least 10 years. I couldn't find anyone like that either.
11:30 Dr. Moss: He was able to find someone who did only alternative therapies. A kid in Israel who had recurrent Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). Maybe the worst possible diagnosis in cancer. In the best of times it's extremely difficult to treat. It is incurable because it extends itself silently through the brain. He had no longer responded to radiation therapy. The family were Russian emigrates. There was no internet at that time but they had a neighbor who had a supply of a viral therapy. A form of the Newcastle Disease vaccine. His speech started to clear up a little bit. He wasn't having as many seizures. He was a teen. They took him to Budapest, Hungary and he got more treatment there. He got better and better and within a matter of months he was completely cured.
This was not an anecdote. An anecdote is something that people relate and write it up without documentation. But this is a well established case history, which by the way is the oldest form of medical reporting in the world. Hippocrates, the ancient Greek used these kinds of case histories.
He coauthored a couple of papers on this. The treating physician at Hadassah hospital in Israel as well as other coauthors. Moss met the patient 20 years ago when this took place. Moss has a colleague in Hungary who he talked to a couple of days ago, who has been in touch with the patient and he's fine. He graduated high school and college, got married and has children. He has a little bit of a limp likely from the radiation treatment. He never did anything except that one thing.
That was one of the miracle cases that changed his life.
He's been advocating for the testing Newcastle disease vaccine since then. It's starting to make a bit of a comeback.
15:40 What's very important to him is the whole experience of William B Coley and Coley's toxins. He stumbled into it when he worked at MSKCC in 1974. The most exciting thing happening there at the time was immune therapy.
The President of the overall center, Lewis Thomas, the President of the Institute, Robert Good and one of the VPs of the institute, Lloyd Old, were immunologists. This was his schooling. He met Helen Coley Nauts, whose father was William B Coley, who used an immune therapy for cancer starting in 1893. He invented a product of 2 killed bacteria, which triggered chills and fairly high fevers and perfected a way to give it to cause remission in cancer.
He died in 1936. Helen picked it up and in the 40s and onward, thoroughly documented every case she could find, every person who took it, and she composed 18 monographs (single subject books) on the topic of immunotherapy and Coley's toxins. The cure rate (long-term remission following severe illness/cancer, 20 years or so) was very very high. Something like 50%. The cases are extraordinary. He had the advantage of knowing her, meeting her, corresponding with her, going to her house and seeing the records, talked to patients who were treated. He would be on a radio show (e.g. Robert Atkins) who would call in who was treated by Dr. Coley. Helen gave him a set of those books, which he looks at almost every day. He'd start with that as a bedrock - that there was a treatment 100 years ago that was capable of curing cancer even in very advanced situations. He'll never give up on believing it - he'd have to believe William B Coley (one of the directors of MSKCC 4 leading bone surgeons in the US, highly regarded and honored), Brad Coley his son, Helen Coley his daughter who kept up her research until 2000.
Lloyd Old was probably the greatest cancer immunologist of the 20th century with an incredible array of achievements.
He was so modest he would put forward other people and put himself in the background. Tumor necrosis factor was discovered in his lab; the first author on this world-shaking discovery, was the lab technician in the lab. He credited her with the discovery and put her on the paper. Brilliant, insightful, honest - you don't come across this every day. You don't find that. I can't give up on that fundamental knowledge. This isn't like Rife Machine or other things that have interesting stories but they don't have documentation, proof that these mysterious treatment worked.
Helen's organization was the CRI - Lloyd was the first scientific director. The second director after he passed away 10 years ago was James B Allison who Old asked him to do. Allison won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for discovering checkpoint inhibitors. Moss sees what this is, connects the dots. This is recognition - the fruit of - the current revolution of immunotherapy. It came in direct descent of William B. Coley who himself stumbled upon the fact that people who had a particular infection had spontaneous remissions of their cancer. An observation this was made repeatedly, in the 19th century they saw it. Anton Chekhov wrote about this in his letters and the Germans experimented with giving people Erysipelas in the 19th century. But Coley refined that discovery and so that's to him, the bedrock. He knows that this can work but with that said it has to be refined and improved. In this capitalized society we need it to make money for it to be accepted. It's not easy but it's real.
Why did Alex in Israel have remission? Because of the IS. Some viruses preferentially kill cancer cells. The virus is toxic. The Newcastle virus expresses itself on the cancer cell which makes it attractive to the IS. The IS will recognize that now marked cell and kill it. That's why immune checkpoint drugs are important - Keytruda, Opdivo, etc. There are situations where they work very well. But even Jim Allison has written two papers - the ideal would be to combine the CKI by Newcastle disease. We're definitely getting closer but the whole picture will come together at a certain point. You can't put the jigsaw puzzle together and excluded half the pieces because in your mind they're illegitimate alternative medicine. Conversely you can't leave out the conventional part of it. If you tie one hand behind your back, you're not going to be able to do this.
27:00 Bailey: As I discover new research it opens my mind to different aspects of my healing journey. I went through all the standard treatments and 2 weeks later I had more cancer, all in my body. My doctor said I had 7 months without treatment, 14 months with treatment. We found Coley's toxins and the Gerson Therapy. I started PABA (which is antiviral and my ) and a redox supplement, then one round of Temodar, chemo pills. At the end of the week of chemo pills I had measurable shrinkage but thought it could be human error but it was measured again in the next week or two and it shrunk another half a centimeter. The oncologist thought that it would take a month to have any noticeable effect with the chemo so I was unsure of what was really going on.
I had decided to go to Mexico to pursue the Gerson therapy and Coley's toxins because they had significantly effective results in melanoma. And within ten weeks of my diagnosis all the cancer was gone, by the grace of God. Looking back I wonder what would have happened if I didn't get Coley's toxins or the Gerson Therapy, I don't know if would have had complete remission without doing them or if I would have healed almost all the way and then those therapies would have caused the rest to heal. So I was wondering…
29:35 Q) DO you recommend doing conventional and alternative at the same time or doing something alternative first then conventional if needed?
A) It's perfectly rational in early and late stages (to pursue just alternative therapies). The trouble is the middle when it's possibly curable through conventional means. Maybe to hedge bets combine the both. If you're in active surveillance (watchful waiting) - most of these alternative things are inocuous. If you have the money, inclination and time it makes sense.
In another situation where the best they can offer you is a phase 1 clinical trial, or a phase 3 clinical trial, they have so many problems, not the least of which is stopping all other therapies. I'm not a fan of most clinical trials, and certainly if you've basically been told to go home and get your affairs in order, doctors don't really have much to offer. In a situation in which you have very little to lose and you're up to making the trip to Germany or Mexico then do it.
There are some cases, and it's almost always women with breast cancer, people reject all conventional therapy at the stage at which it's probably curable through conventional means. It used to be that chemo in particular was overprescribed. Now it's more rare but I find that a lot of times maybe they're so beaten up by the medical system they don't want to get involved in it. It's a tough situation and I'm not a big supporter of doing alternative things, because a lot of times what people opt for it the kind they choose is not well documented and there isn't all that much information or proof of the effectiveness. I won't make a categorical statement but it's complicated because you have a lot of different types of cancer.
I am not of the school that believes that complementary treatments by their nature conflict with conventional therapy. American oncologists tend to think that. I don't think that's a proven face. You can't have evidence based medicine then throw the principles of evidence based medicine and be guided by your gut or some small studies that are not representative of the totality. There is no proof that even antioxidants conflict with pro oxidant, alkylating agents. What's a bigger antioxidants than vitamin C, but if you give it along with chemotherapy like Gemcitabine, the patients live twice as long than if you didn't give the vitamin C!
Vitamin C can function as a pro oxidant and visa versa. You get this complex chemical interplay.
Keith Block who is an integrative oncologist Skoke, Illinois has done some wonderful papers and surveys, looked at the world literature and published his own results - there is no proof that antioxidants will conflict. As for radiation, Ralph wrote a paper for Integrative Therapies and with one exception, which was the so called Birodies study in Quebec a few years ago, there was no evidence that antioxidants will conflict with radiation therapy. But that Birodies study was cited hundreds of times and played up in the media as well.
A few years later, Isabelle Birody herself published another paper showing that the only people who were harmed by taking vitamin E or vitamin A - synthetic single vitamins - current smokers who received radiation therapy and were still smoking during radiation and if they took synthetic vitamin A or E, their tumors grew. No one else was harmed. There were two people who ever noticed that second study - him and Keith Block - no one in the media. The other study was covered widely over the world.
You can't undo the damage done in the age of media. There was another fellow at MSKCC who found that there was vitamin C in cancer cells. He panicked and said that taking IV vitamin C would make cancer explode. It was spread all over the world and it's still being repeated. The University of Iowa did an actual clinical trial which showed that IV C plus Gemcitabine plus radiation doubled the survival time in pancreatic cancer.
39:00 One guy had a theory that was completely misguided which was based on misunderstanding of the very facts he discovered - was the vitamin c there to promote the growth of the cancer or fighting it? He didn't know, he just panicked basically and fed into the quack buster mentality and it got spread all over the world. The study that showed that in actual practice, the IV vitamin C benefited the cancer patients and doubled their survival time that got very little publicity. But you can't undo the harm. It takes generations to move this around, but things get so vetted in the minds of the oncologists. This is the way the oncology profession… Why would this be? Oncologists are very well intended people; they're very intelligent; they definitely have the best interest of their patients. But if you pull back the camera a little bit and look at the structure of the profession, the glaring fact is that the leadership of the profession is taking millions and millions and millions of dollars from the pharmaceutical companies. It isn't just legitimate taking money to perform studies, it's taking gifts from the company for personal use, in their own pocket, for occasionally giving a lecture to other doctors on how wonderful the drug is, or whatever the topic may be. Honoraria or speakers fees or consulting fees, however you want to disguise it, it's pay offs. It can reach as much as $3 million dollars per person. We know because it was on the front page of the New York Times a couple of years ago about the physician in chief at MSKCC he was grossly promoting the drugs of the companies he was taking money from. It's not an isolated incident, it's a pattern. That the key opinion leaders within the field are going to take. It's a problem he discusses in his book Cancer Incorporated, which is available free at his website, MossReports.com.
43:00 Q) How to pray for him?
You don't have to pray for me. I appreciate the sentiment but if you want to help us you'll help us too, you can go to MossReports.com and sign up for various products. They offer their latest book Cancer Incorporate and latest documentary Immunotherapy: The Battle Within for free if you sign up at the website.
44:10 Q) Diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer in October 2017. What is your opinion on using THC and CBD tinctures?
A) I don't know if there's any harm in it. We're just at the beginning of understanding the role of cannabis in cancer. When I toured Israel one of the doctors at the Hadassah Hospital said they were giving cannabis product to all their patients. Cannabis wasn't legal in Israel but it was legal, medicinal marijuana. I'm hopeful about it but it falls pretty far down the list not because it couldn't turn out to be good but what we have is basically anecdotes from Rick Simpson but I don't think that's a very firm foundation yet. Things that are more likely to be effective are things for which we have a great deal research and have been shown to kill cancer stem cells. For instance, Metformin as a drug, certain food extracts, food chemicals like - sulforaphane, curcumin, EGCG. There is a ton of research on those things. I'm hopeful about the whole question about cannabis because it's been suppressed. It still continues to be repressed at the federal level. There's a good reason why this treatment plant would never have gotten a to-do, in terms of research. But in the next few years I think we'll know more.
46:22 Q) Stage 4 sarcoma patient and has been dealing with it for the past 14 years. Has taken chemo and immunotherapy on and off and had a complete response but it came back in 2018. What do you think of vitamin C IV with immunotherapy or can I take an IV vitamin C with my current immunotherapy? I'm taking Yervoy and Ipilimumab and I've been with the trial for more than a year.
A) One of the adjunctive treatments Dr. Kleef has used in Vienna for the past five years is IV vitmain C and some other things. Anything you can do, as long as the doctors know that you're doing it. These drugs have side effects, a lot of potential side effects themselves. If you make the immune system too active there's always the possibility you'll go into a crisis like tumor lysis syndrome that could push you over into grades 3 and 4 side effects. Do this with a holistic doctor or at least make your dermatologist or oncologist aware of the fact that you're doing it.
48:20 Q) The GBM brain cancer. Her father just passed away in October. Are there any studies or do you have any information on whether that cancer is hereditary; and if there are tests she or her siblings could do. Also, everything happened so quickly when he was diagnosed. How do you find the best doctor for treatment when you're just diagnosed and you don't even know where to turn?
A) I don't think it's hereditary. I would have to research that; I can't think of any study that said it's hereditary. In terms of finding doctors, the brain tumor organizations maintain lists of them. I use the US News and World Report ranking of hospitals very much. I find that to be very helpful. I also look at people's publication records. I have access to the big cancer textbook but who are other books you can look at or at PubMed, but look at the big publishers, the people who have done the most research. Or I look at a particular topic I'm interested in and I'll see who has published on that particular topic. There's really no objective way except to use things like US News which is very dependable for the hospitals. More for the hospitals than the original doctors.
50:25 Q) Have you ever had a patient who was diagnosed with triple negative secretory breast cancer with metastases to the lungs with the NTRK mutation?
A) I'm not a medical doctor and I don't have patients, just to be very clear. But I did co-author a paper with Dr. Kleef on a client of ours who had TNBC, I’m not recalling the particular genetic mutation profile, by the way I've written a lot on that in my book Cancer, Incorporated. If you want to get a bigger picture of genetic versus metabolic origins of cancer and so forth, look at that. Dr. Kleef had a patient where there was so much lung metastases that you could barely see normal tissue on the x rays. He got a complete remission from that cancer and it lasted 27 months. The patient died after 27 months, she couldn't go back, I think she couldn't afford the treatment. He was in Vienna, Austria at this time. He's moving his clinic now but has published the results of his treatments and it's very good. Its combination of low doses of immune checkpoint inhibitors with other immune stimulating treatments. It's a situation that can definitely be benefited by immunotherapy.
"Erysipelas" on Wikipedia: "The development of antibiotics, as well as increased sanitation standards has contributed to the decreased rate of incidence.[13]"
